FirstCapital Bank of Texas Chairman Ken Burgess is fighting for community banks. For the third time in four weeks, the incoming chairman of the American Bankers Association was in Washington, D.C., to talk with federal officials about the plight of community banks.

“We’re losing almost a community bank per day, and we have done that since Dodd-Frank passed in 2010,” he told the Reporter-Telegram on Thursday, one day after he and other bankers from around the country met with Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and members of the Treasury Department.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed in 2010 in response to the Great Recession, but its across-the-board rules and regulations have been hard on community banks and even has FCB concerned as it gets close to various thresholds laid out in federal lending guidelines.

Burgess talked with the federal government about the difficulties community banks are having when lending to small businesses. “There are a number of lines of businesses that if a bank is involved in it increase the amount of capital they have to hold to be in that area of business. Many of those regulations directly impact our ability to lend to small businesses. Since the president’s primary focus is creating jobs, the last thing you want to do is hurt small businesses.”

One area is in commercial real estate lending. “If you think about a small business that needs a building to operate out of, banks finance those businesses so they can have a place to operate,” he said. “When you put regulations in place that makes it harder and harder to make those types of loans, that impacts small business.”

For FCB, “We’re right at 100 percent on that particular guideline. There’s a bit of leniency to go past that, but if you go too far past that, there’s increased scrutiny and potentially increased capital that we have to hold within the bank because of that. We pay attention to that.”

Another inhibitor is a 300 percent threshold for all commercial real estate, which includes interim construction. “Right now, we are somewhere between 250 percent to 260 percent, so we have to be judicious of the loans we make.” FCB is forced to focus on existing customers first because it’s so close to the threshold. It might not be able to consider new customers who seek loans. This makes it difficult for his bank to facilitate growth in Midland, which has seen an economic uptick in recent months.

Facilitating local economic growth is the mission of community banks such as FCB, Burgess said. He added that community banks have better knowledge about commercial real estate in their region than the federal government. He made the point clear to Mnuchin and company, he said. “Setting artificial guidelines and ignoring the fact that community banks know their communities, know their customers and know where the risks lie better than a regulator in Washington, D.C., setting a one-size-fits-all policy limit on banks.”

“We need to let the local communities decide where credit should be allocated so we can grow those communities. The result of that is good for our country because growth in our individual communities is going to make our economy better,” he said.

If given the choice, Burgess said he first would restructure regulations on home lending because people seeking small home loans often get less consideration. “From the bank’s standpoint, it’s better to do the big loan because, in a lot of cases, we lose money on the smaller loans. We need to fix that so banks are as willing to make small home loans as they are big home loans.”

He explained that appraisals, inspections, surveys, legal fees and other regulatory requirements cost the bank the same for loans big and small. “The ones who are being hurt the worst are the people who are trying to buy the less-expensive houses. When you make it so costly and so hard to make a loan, it gets costly for those small loans because it costs as much for a $50,000 home loan as it does for a $500,000 home loan.”

Burgess sympathizes with people and businesses seeking small loans. Before he was exposed to the banking business, he worked on a farm. His father started a bank when he was in eighth grade, and he got his first taste of the business when he got the chance to work at the bank when he was a sophomore. “When I had an opportunity to work for the bank in high school, I had more fun working there than out driving a tractor or walking out into the field with a hoe in my hand,” he said.

For Burgess, the pursuit of banking wasn’t about becoming wealthy. He’s community-minded, and the industry is his way to make positive impacts.

“I’m not in banking for the money. If I wanted to be in a job where I wanted to make a lot of money, I probably would have been a doctor or an engineer,” he said. “The thing I enjoy most about banking is I get to help people, I get to help small business owners. I get to see the success from the help I’m able to give them. That’s what makes my job enjoyable.”

Changing federal regulations so small banks can continue serving their communities is why he has spent so much time in the nation’s capital, having previously met with President Donald Trump and speaking before the House Financial Services Subcommittee.

“The more we can make things better for our small businesses and our communities, the more everyone will benefit because more jobs are created when our businesses are successful and more individual consumers around the country will benefit,” Burgess said.